Technology

Whether you’re trading in your old iPhone for a discount on a new one, selling it, giving it away, or recycling it, you’re going to want to erase all of your data first. Not only do you want to keep personal information from falling into the wrong hands, but let’s face it: nobody’s going to want a phone with your old selfies on it. After you’ve transferred all of your data to a new phone (or, if you’re not getting a new phone, backed your data up), here’s how to wipe your iPhone: Get rid of a few identifiable features Disable “Find My iPhone” by going to “Settings” > “Find My” > “Find My Phone” and toggling “Find My Phone” and “Find My Network” to off. Unpair any devices from your phone, including your Apple Watch. Toggle iMessages off (just in case). Sign out of your Apple ID Select...

OpenSea, the biggest NFT trading marketplace, said today that one of its employees used internal information to buy NFTs that were about to be featured on its homepage — and likely spike in value. Accusations were made against OpenSea’s head of product, Nate Chastain, last night after a community member publicized suspicious transactions from his wallet. “Yesterday we learned that one of our employees purchased items that they knew were set to display on our front page before they appeared there publicly,” the announcement tweeted by OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer read. “​​This is incredibly disappointing.” The site explicitly prohibits “deceptive or manipulative trading activities” in its Terms of Service. The statement was prompted by a community-led investigation of Chastain’s trades. On Twit...

OpenSea, the biggest NFT trading marketplace, said today that one of its employees used internal information to buy NFTs that were about to be featured on its homepage — and likely spike in value. Accusations were made against OpenSea’s head of product, Nate Chastain, last night after a community member publicized suspicious transactions from his wallet. “Yesterday we learned that one of our employees purchased items that they knew were set to display on our front page before they appeared there publicly,” the announcement tweeted by OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer read. “​​This is incredibly disappointing.” The site explicitly prohibits “deceptive or manipulative trading activities” in its Terms of Service. The statement was prompted by a community-led investigation of Chastain’s trades. On Twit...

Yes, of course you want to back up your iPhone — as we all know, despite phone cases and Gorilla glass and careful engineering, disaster — in the form of cracked displays, lost devices, and three-year-olds who think it’s fun to sit on your latest phone — can happen. When that happens, you want to have all your data backed up. The easiest way to go is to back up using iCloud, which is not only simple to set up, but makes it just as simple to set up a new phone if your old one is no longer available. (You can also back up to other services, such as Google Drive, but it isn’t nearly as convenient.) Or, if you’re an iPhone user who is steadfast about retaining your privacy, you can back up your iPhone to your Mac or Windows computer and retain full control of your data backups. Here’s how to b...

Facebook reportedly fielded complaints from political parties saying a major News Feed change pushed them toward negative, polarizing posts. Today, The Wall Street Journal posted leaked reports from Facebook after it boosted “meaningful social interactions” on the platform. While Facebook framed the move as helping friends connect, internal reports said it had “unhealthy side effects on important slices of public content, such as politics and news,” calling these effects an “increasing liability.” The news is part of a larger Wall Street Journal series based on internal Facebook research. Today’s report delves into the fallout of a 2018 decision to prioritize posts with lots of comments and reactions. Facebook allegedly made the change after noticing that comments, likes, and reshares had ...

This past weekend marked the first Sunday of the 2021 NFL season, and while it was full of exciting highlights, one may have towered over them all: the Carolina Panthers’ viral video of a giant virtual panther leaping around Bank of America Stadium. The video is ridiculous. A big virtual cat jumps into the stadium, paces around the field, shreds a New York Jets flag (the Panthers’ Sunday opponents), and hops away with a menacing roar. It’s proved to be hugely popular, with 5.6 million views on Twitter. While the Panthers’ tweet calls the mascot a “mixed-reality panther,” it actually seems closer to augmented reality applied on a really big scale, according to a conversation I had with Jon Slusser and CJ Davis of The Famous Group, the company behind the virtual panther. In short, what’s goi...

SpaceX is set to launch the first fully private crew of passengers to space on Wednesday. The Inspiration4 crew, three ordinary people and a billionaire philanthropist who’s funding the mission, will board SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule on Wednesday afternoon and lift off at 8:02PM ET atop a Falcon 9 rocket, speeding toward an orbit 360 miles above the ground — farther from Earth than the International Space Station. If all goes according to plan, the mission will mark a new milestone in the budding commercial space industry, where companies owned by billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have been racing to normalize space travel for people other than government astronauts. The mission also aims to raise $200 million for St. Jude Children’s Hospital to help fund cancer research. Jared I...

How bad is Instagram for the mental health of its younger users? It’s a hugely important question, especially with Facebook planning to launch a version of the app for children. A new report from The Wall Street Journal suggests the answer is “pretty bad,” based on internal research conducted by Facebook that it’s been unwilling to share with the public. The WSJ recently got access to these in-depth studies, which paint a bleak picture of the detrimental effects Instagram has on its younger users, particularly teenage girls. For this latter group, Instagram is a powerful engine for “social comparison” — when one judges one’s own value, attractiveness, and success based on comparisons with others. Teenage girls are often blasted with images of idealized bodies on Instagram, appearing as adv...

Ford and Walmart are teaming to launch a robo-delivery service in three US cities, using autonomous test vehicles equipped with sensors and software developed by Argo AI. Customers who live in Miami, Austin, and Washington, DC, who order items from Walmart online and live within a specific geographic area may be eligible to have their items delivered by a Ford/Argo vehicle. The companies plan on kicking off “integration testing” for the delivery service this year, with plans to expand the geographic areas over time. Autonomous delivery is seen as a potentially lucrative market, with online grocery shopping growing fivefold over the next decade and American consumers spending upward of $100 billion on food-at-home items by 2025, according to a recent report. Ford has been experimenting with...

LG has announced a new lineup of Direct View LED (DVLED) home cinema displays, which range in size from a huge 108-inch HD screen to an obscene 325-inch 8K panel that costs an eye-watering $1.7 million, according to CNET, and weighs in at over 2,000 pounds. The company has previously reserved these displays for commercial buyers, but now it’ll sell them to anyone with pockets deep enough. Obviously, these screen sizes mean the home theater displays aren’t going to fit in a lot of houses, a limitation that’s likely to have a lot to do with the display technology they’re using. Rather than using an LCD layer to create pixels, and lighting it with separate LEDs, these displays just use LEDs (with some using smaller MicroLEDs, according to CNET), similar to what we’ve seen from Samsung’s The W...

Cameras continue to be one of the biggest differentiators in smartphones, and Apple’s iPhone lineup is no different. Apple says the iPhone 13 and 13 Mini have the company’s “most advanced dual-camera system ever,” while the 13 Pro and Pro Max have “our three most powerful cameras ever.” Which you’d hope for, of course. But this year, Apple really does appear to be making a big push with its cameras, particularly with the Pro models. As ever, the question will be what Apple is able to wring out of its hardware with image processing and software. The iPhone 13 lineup represents the first time Apple has increased the primary camera’s sensor size across the board since the iPhone XS and XR in 2018, though last year’s 12 Pro Max had a 47 percent bigger sensor than the 12 and 12 Pro. Sensor size...

Looking to challenge the world of aesthetic computing, Singaporean custom PC specialist, Aftershock PC, has teamed up with server solution name, GIGABYTE USA, to create the “world’s first bubble tea” gaming PC. The commissioned exotic builds on the user’s love of bubble with a fully customized interior marked by a milky taro bubble tea-like coolant and replica bobas. The unique cooling setup sees the faux bobas swirl around in the reservoir like they would at the bottom of a traditional cup. Finishing up the look is a glow-in-the-dark corgi drinking bubble tea motif to celebrate the owner’s beloved pet. Aside from its striking look, the custom pc is loaded with powerful components, courtesy of AORUS ANZ. Take a look at Aftershock PC’s “world’s first bubble tea” gaming PC above and catch a ...